May 10 - “In a Little While”
In a Little While
John 14:15-21
Acts 17:22-31
May 10, 2026 – First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown MA
Rev. Mary W. Nelson
In John’s gospel, Jesus talks a lot – we looked at that last week. In the midst of all that talking, sometimes there is a brief respite for doing. We are in a section of John’s gospel known as the “Farewell Discourses,” where Jesus is saying goodbye to his disciples, preparing them for that imminent time when they will need to carry on the ministry of their movement without Jesus to guide them. He’s trying to pack in as much as he can, and they become confused and overwhelmed, and they don’t really understand why he’s saying what he’s saying. This is the time when he is talking about what they will be doing.
It’s John’s Jesus, so there are a lot of words. But John’s Jesus tells his disciples to do just one thing – three times – in three different ways: to love. “If you love me,” he says to them in our passage today, “you will keep my commandment.” And in our reading of this passage, uprooted from everything else in the gospel, this sounds like a conditional statement, some kind of coercion, maybe a clumsy attempt at a bargain. We can imagine Jesus as a petulant teenager: If you love me, you’ll let me stay out late with the car. We can imagine Jesus as an anxious parent: If you love me, you’ll settle down and give me grandchildren! But that’s not the kind of if that Jesus is saying here.
There are only two other times in John’s gospel that Jesus talks about “his commandment,” and they are like parentheses around our passage today. In John 13, Jesus says to his disciples: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” And then in John 15, Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus’s commandment is a commandment to love – and if you love me, he says, you will keep my commandment. To love Jesus, to love one another, is to fulfill the commandment that he gives his disciples. He’s speaking in the future tense, explaining how to be his followers after he’s gone: I will do this, I will do that, and if you love me, you will be keeping my commandment.
Jesus then tells the disciples that they will not be alone in their endeavors. “I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of Truth.” The Advocate that Jesus mentions, whom we now understand as the Holy Spirit, is described using the word “paraclete,” which means “one who comes alongside.” A companion, a partner. In different eras, the word has been translated differently – so what we read now as the Advocate has also been translated as the Comforter, the Helper, or the Counselor. And that person will always be with the disciples forever, Jesus says.
As the Farewell Discourses unfold, the language sometimes feels more and more jumbled up – but the role of love, companionship, community, becomes more and more central to who Jesus is telling his disciples to be. All that abiding in each other, all that believing in this and therefore in that, all that knowing God because we know Jesus and knowing Jesus because we know what his followers do… all of that is about belonging to one another, belonging to the Christian community. If we love one another, we love Jesus. If we love one another, we’re keeping his commandment. If we are companions for one another in life, then we will know the companionship of the Holy Spirit alongside us. He says it again, “Those who keep my commandments are those who love me.” What’s the commandment? The only one John’s Jesus gives us? Love one another. Love one another as I have loved you.
These days it feels like it’s getting harder and harder to follow Jesus’s commandment to love one another. We may be able to do it in small doses, in contained settings and particular groups. In our families, hopefully. In our church, perhaps. In our workplaces or other places where we volunteer or spend a great deal of committed time and energy… maybe? We are in a cultural moment where every action (and every inaction) feels imbued with a declaration of identity, of side-choosing. I shop at this store, not at that one. I drive this kind of car, not that. I visit these places, not those. I watch this TV channel, not that. I read these books, not those. Each choice, hour by hour, moment by moment, a declaration of who you are, who you love—and who you hate.
It all feels like a trap. So un-Christlike. So un-Christian. Time was, not long ago, when we could love our neighbors AND love our enemies, as Jesus taught us to do. When we could believe that we were being loving toward others even if we didn’t like them.
And part of this cultural moment we are in does involve learning differently—that what we thought was loving our neighbors may still have caused harm. We may be grateful for that learning along the way. I give thanks for my friends who taught me that “hate the sin, love the sinner” is a damaging approach to inclusion. I give thanks for my friends who taught me that to claim “I don’t see color” is to say, “I don’t acknowledge that your experience has been different than mine, and those differences have hurt you.”
But how do we love one another in ways that offer both healing and accountability?
That is why we need the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, as our companion on this journey: so that we have a guide, a partner, to help us to find our way to Christlike love. We don’t have to make it up as we go! We don’t have to stumble in the dark in search of a way forward. Whatever name we give it today, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit is with us: “our Keeper, helping us to maintain our balance, to stay on sure footing,” as we heard in the Call to Worship based on Psalm 66 this morning.
Love is hard. It’s complicated! It’s not the pink-tinted, rose-scented sentimentality that the greeting card industry would sell us. It’s not warm fuzzy feelings all the time, and a nice warm supper waiting for you when you get home. It’s work. It’s challenge. Love is saying, “I don’t agree with you, but I’m going to stay here and we’re going to work it out.” Love is saying, “This hurt me, but I’m not giving up… on this friendship, this relationship, this covenant we share.” I’m not giving up on the idea and the ideals that we share–but maybe I have more to learn. I will listen more carefully; I will speak more carefully. I will learn from you, and I hope you can learn from me. Love is saying, “I’m not going anywhere, but I will give you distance if you need it.” And love is saying, “Welcome back, I’m glad you’re home.”
“If you love me, keep my commandment” is not about conditional love. It’s about the most unconditional love the world has ever known. This is all it takes, this is all we are asked to do: to love, to be loved, to welcome and receive the healing, the imperfection, the beauty of being known, and of having companions on the journey. Thanks be to God. Amen.